


The Hardship of Mountains

by JennaCupcakes



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 01:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6544243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, it's always a perfect theory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardship of Mountains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nakymatonlapsi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nakymatonlapsi/gifts).



In the beginning, it’s always a perfect theory. 

Once he’s gathered all the assumptions and data he has into a working model, he feels almost serene in the face of the part of nature he just described, no matter how small. Hypotheses slot together into a congruent whole, and the birds-eye view is stunning.

* * *

In the beginning, it’s always a perfect equation.

Numbers match up so well in graphic models, it’s a fact of computational science that once you see the renderings on screen, it makes you never want to go outside anymore. The perfect world is right here, in this computer model, and it’s all about the numbers. Never about the people.

* * *

Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler, circa 2013, have a hypothesis about their relationship. Their emails span an entire ocean, two, if one feels inclined to be fair to the North Sea, and in those emails is contained everything of value to these two men.

They talk in pure, unaltered discourse, uninhibited by the limits of actual human conversation, tracing trains of thoughts in multitudes through conversations that span pages upon pages. There is a purity to those conversations that both men lack in their real lives. Their base assumption is that they’re being _understood_ for the first time in their lives. Their hypothesis is that they’d work better together than apart.

* * *

 

All hypotheses need testing.

* * *

By 2016, Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler have developed a working model of their relationship. Not content to have pixels on screens stand in for all the things they feel they could express much better in person, they have, both in their own little corner of the world, begun engineering parameters that might, one day, lead to a meeting between the two of them. The lag time of several time zones and the days it takes the other to respond can only be detrimental to their efficiency, the theory suggests, and it is a bias that lends itself all too easily to them. After all, extrapolating from current evidence, the theory seems quite plausible.

 

“ _Sehr geehrter Doktor Geiszler_ ,“ Hermann catches himself thinking sometimes, “Dear Doctor Geiszler,“ wondering when the man stopped spelling his name with an _ß_ , if it was the US immigration office that did it or if his family had given up on ubiquitous German letters even before that, “Dear Doctor Geiszler“ and nothing more. It feels like a thought in its own right, a hypothesis laid out formally on paper and the curve of distribution it will be tested against. 

 

Newton catches himself mentioning “My friend Hermann“ in conversation sometimes, and it feels like a secret, feels forbidden but also so _right_ , because there’s this man somewhere on the other side of the world and a computer screen who leads his own life, with his own friends and acquaintances and colleagues, but when Newton calls him up in conversations like this he’s all Newt’s, and he’s _there_. The words are a hypothesis in their own right, and they are tested in the flesh, in the limited way that is possible for Newton to test them without the actual presence of Doctor Gottlieb. Sometimes, Newton wonders if the man will speak with a German accent, if the small Bavarian town he grew up in shows in his diction, but then most of the time these parameters seem like technicalities in the face of the real question, which is: when, if ever, will Doctor Geiszler and Doctor Gottlieb meet in person?

* * *

By 2018, the meeting they both laid out in theories and late night fantasies has become a statistical inevitability: Both at the head of their fields in Kaiju science, they are going to have to meet at some point, or so it would seem. The same force that is laying waste to their planet is driving them together, finally. After all these years.

* * *

In the beginning, it’s always a perfect theory.

The foundations are impeccable, building consistently from existing scientific theory into something new and exciting and beautiful, ready to be thrown at real empirical data to see how it works.

* * *

 It rarely ever works.

* * *

Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb clash like theoretical expectations and empirical data are known to clash mostly in the second-year attempts at a scientific paper of social science students. The parameters don’t match up, there’s too much interference, and both men leave with their working models a pile of glorified scrap paper ready to be thrown into one paper shredder or another. If one wants to be entirely fair, one has to mention that both men did start out with similar assumptions and hypotheses about the progress of their relationship from this meeting forward. They just forgot to take one important factor into account - that it takes two to tango, and that it certainly takes two (frustratingly different) scientists to have a fruitful scientific discourse.

* * *

This does not console Doctor Gottlieb and Doctor Geiszler.

So far, none of them has thought of this relationship in scientific terms, and so they will it into its early grave of discarded theories and crushed hopes, along with first semester papers and childhood dreams of Nobel prizes. Emails on hard drives are moved to sub-folders, but even then, notes on post-its tacked to running projects serve as painful reminders of the beautiful theory both men once had.

* * *

Theoretical assumptions are rarely ever correct the first time around.

* * *

Barely anyone gets it right the first time around.

* * *

The essence of science, in the mind of Doctor Newton Geiszler, is to get right down into the grind of it, the dirt and the messiness, where bones meet organs meet muscles meet tissue and blood and a whole lot of other unpleasant body fluids. Science means taking things apart to see how they work, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively, but mostly literally. He’s a very hands-on person, and he knows that in biology, expectations rarely meet reality when it comes down to it.

* * *

The essence of science, in the mind of Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, is the rigorous application of standards and working models building upon pre-existing theories to reach new horizons. The shoulders he’s standing on are stacked so high that it’s a wonder the whole thing isn’t toppling over. He has read Popper, and is an avid believer in his image of the heroic scientists who impresses with bold ideas those who were formerly unbelieving. He thinks of Karl Popper when he applies for the Jaeger Academy, and he thinks of Karl Popper when he meets Newton for the first time.

When both of these things - perfect in his mind, the logical extension of the facts as they presented themselves to him - fail, he recalls that bravery in the sciences requires scrutiny and humility, and the ability to work past the fact that one might have been wrong.

* * *

In the beginning, it’s always a perfect theory, but then comes revision and re-revision and re-re-revision until the inexhaustible fantasy of the aspiring scientist meets uncaring academical deadlines, or the funding runs out.

* * *

Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler try again, or rather, are forced to try again, like chemical compounds that won’t mix. When it comes down to revision, science is rarely ever glamorous, and it’s even less so when chalk and blackboards meet organs and alien tissue samples in a collision of dwindling funds and the strange unwillingness of two scientists to let go of each other despite obvious personal dislike. As scientists, both of them are too stubborn to discard of their neat little model altogether for now, even though they would never admit such a thing.

* * *

So they try again, through years where the only statistical certainty is the next kajiu attack, and their perfect theory from years ago becomes less and less shiny with age until it is barely recognizable.

Hermann Gottlieb learns that Newton Geiszler is overbearing, and that he has a habit of explaining science with a lot of pop culture references, but that he also has a penchant for staying up late when new specimen need preparing, that he gives out his findings willingly to other scientists still looking, still searching for some way to end this. 

Newton Geiszler learns that Hermann Gottlieb has spent too many years of his life in Germany for Newt to like him, the man perfected the art of carrying a stick up his butt and he tends to report Newt for nearly every splash of alien body fluids on the wrong side of the lab, but he also learns that Hermann Gottlieb owns three volumes of Berthold Brecht that he has a habit of reading late at night when he can’t sleep and that he’s willing to share with Newton, and it’s all the existential dread Newt feels wrapped neatly into the words of a German playwright who lived nearly sixty years ago. Hermann reads German with a much calmer, deeper voice than he reads English, and that’s also something that Newton learns, and sometimes they speak their mother tongue when nights at the lab get late and they are trying to keep each other awake.

* * *

In the beginning, it’s always a perfect theory, but when it comes down to it, perfect theories are rather boring. The gain from those is almost minimal - perfect theories are rarely ever daring, and so nothing comes from them except a small advance. The real deal are the imperfect theories, the ones that clash and fail multiple times before succeeding, because every stumble is another contrary possibility ruled out.

* * *

So Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler put their theory to the final test on a rundown Hong Kong dock under colorful neon lights with the stench of dead kaiju around them and the precipice of the edge of their respective scientific fields before them. When they connect their brains to electric interfaces that will meld their consciousnesses with that of an alien invader, they also put to the test that which they have build over working together to save their species. Their final test is for the significance of their relationship.

* * *

They come out the other side bleeding and vomiting and more than slightly shaken, but they come out successful.

* * *

When Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb stand in front of classrooms in later years, they are often asked what made them stick to science in the face of literal earth-eating monsters that might have made others lose their faith in the ability of humanity to do anything much besides die screaming. When Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb are asked this question, they smile, most of the time. Because they’ve put to the test more daring things and _won_ , so what is an apocalypse, averted, really, in the great picture of things?

* * *

Hermann still reads Brecht, and Newton still listens to him read German in fascination. ( _Die Mühen der Gebirge liegen hinter uns/ Vor uns liegen die Mühen der Ebenen_ ). Newton still dissembles dead specimen on their kitchen table sometimes, and names the different parts in English, German and Latin for Hermann. Hermann, despite his protestations, listens with interest.

* * *

In the end, it’s always a perfect theory, a solid foundation for future generations to stand on. The struggle is always legendary, but the outcome, in retrospect, seems inevitable. And new theories, however groundbreaking their conception, are awarded a quiet place on the shelf of scientific luminaries. On that shelf, no monsters wait for unsuspecting, German scientists.

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes in this thing that are not mine: 
> 
> Hermann is alluding to Newton when he’s talking about shoulders he’s standing on.  
> The Popper text he’s referring to is from ‚Das Abgrenzungsproblem‘.  
> The Brecht quote is from his poem Wahrnehmung. The title is also a reference to said poem.


End file.
